I am taking part in The Write Tribe Problogger October 2017 Blogging challenge.  
This is my 2nd post in the series. #writetribeproblogger

Friday, October 6 # prompt- Short Story-A New Light on the Horizon

Taken from www. google. co za
Today he slapped Yamini, his daughter.  She was arguing with her mother, at the dining table, then suddenly stood up from her chair, raised the plate in which she was eating with half-eaten food into the air and dropped it onto the floor. The fork and the spoon slipped out of the plate, hit on the tiled floor making a shrill sound and shards of plate flew in all directions together with the food.  And she stood there, without having any shame staring at her mother. He was coming to the dining room; he stretched his arm with a force he could muster and slapped her across her face.  She turned to face him with a hostile look and ran into the kitchen howling.  Shalini, his wife, sat stunned on her chair for a second, then shouted at him: “have you gone mad.”  Shone his son, yelled: “you’re an old bugger, I hate you.”


Later in the night, he walked to his office room, clicked on the light switches.  The illumination from the light stripped the darkness away and bared the room. Flitting about into his mind were Yamini’s howling, curses from Shalini and Shone. He felt a pang of loss: all significant people in his life have rejected him mercilessly, for doing only the right thing as a father.  What was wrong with the way he punished her; he had to discipline his daughter, no matter whoever went against that.  What was this, at present, you don’t beat your child?  From where have these ideologies come to mislead not only the youngsters but even the elders.  His father had been beating and hitting him, even after getting he got married.  He never questioned him; that was showing respect. 
He heard footsteps outside his room.  Shalini came inside, pulled a chair and sat on it.  She had only stood in front of him so far, now sitting on a chair, without he granted permission.  It was an apparent act of challenging him.  “I saw the light in your room,” she said. Her face was still red with anger.
“I thought of talking with you.”  Talking with you- a term she had never used, like people talking in an office.  Has she turned a feminist?
He looked away from her.
“What you did was wrong.  You harmed your child,” she started her talk.
“So, I should have sat their quiet, encouraging her to break more plates.”
“Listen, I was angry with her, it was all my mistakes.”
“She threw the plates down because of your mistake?” He guffawed to insult her.
“Let me explain; I thought she was having an affair with the boy that she was talking to the other day.”
The affair, he thought, how could she use such filthy word in front of him, to pollute the air of morality in this family?
“I got angry with her, and shouted at her, without trying to talk to her to find out what was going on.”
He looked on. “Later when I talked with Shalini, she said, the boy was her friend’s brother.”
“So, you trust her.”
“You don’t trust your daughter?’
“Before beating me, my father never asked me any question to clarify his doubt,” he thought of reminding her more his family tradition.
“Have you ever wished, he had?”
My God, he shifted in his chair.  A funeral pyre was burning inside him.  All his father’s belongings were dutifully burned with his body so that his spirit get entry into the other world easily.  Standing in front of the blazing fire, what had he been contemplating: “Dad, how am I going to bury and burn my yearning for you ever considered talking to me, before concluding I was guilty of everything you had accused me of?” He turned his face away from her to hide the moisture in the eyes. 
“Have you?” She was waiting for an answer.
“Shalini, I can see it now." He turned to her.  "You’re right; I should have sat with both of you and asked what was going on.”
“Thank you,” she said.
When he held her hands, he saw a new light on the horizon. 
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